Oasis (Dispatch Work V)
by PuzzleRaven
Summary: A world where plants rule, and a small set of humans overlooked and forgotten as the sun swells and turns red. Radon has been assigned. (Part of the Dispath Work series) Homage to Aldiss' Hothouse)


**Oasis**

At the first fruiting of the fig tree the man appeared on the branchpath, slipped and fell to the broad green leaf below. Lily-yo cursed, whistling for a dumbler seed as she ran. No adult should fall to the Green and no rare male could be lost to the tribe. As green teeth pierced up from below through the leaf she released the dumblerseed. It was too late.  
For all plant reflexes were fast, animal reflexes were faster. The trapper-snapper's jaws closed, smoking and falling apart as they did. The man stood up, clipping a silver thing to his belt, but the leaf below him was already smoking, decaying. Ignoring the risks as the nettlemoss fell apart, he climbed down swiftly towards Ground, vanishing into the green dark. Lily-yo climbed to a higher branch.

By the second fruiting, the branches were parting and falling. Daphe had stepped too close to the place with no branches. She became smoke and then nothing. All knew a burnurn focusing its rays to burn branches was to be avoided. This one must be huge. Then the nuthuts began to fall. The cement still held the dwellings to trunks, but the trees beneath were unsound. Clat, small, light, who had seen five fruitings, went back for her soul. Her hut fell with her in it. The remaining tribe left their souls behind when Lily-yo moved the tribe on.

In the third fruiting the flyman came. Knowing their enemies' routes, Lily-yo took the tribe on the perilous journey around to the other side of the larger not-plant-patch. The flymen saw them on the other side. They tried to go through the place. They did not come out.

In the fourth fruiting, at the edge of the not-plant-patch as it pushed the tribe back further, Lily-yo saw Ground for the first time. Her youngest, born this season, would never see a world without it.

In the fifth fruiting, Lily-yo, now old, knew it was time to pass on, for she had lost Clat and Daphe and five others. She could not lead. For her and the adults, they prepared to climb to the Tips for sky-burial, even though they could not carry their souls with them. But as they climbed they saw that the path had been severed. The Tips were gone, the treelake at the topforest out of reach, cut off and taken by the no-plant-patch. Lily-yo did not cry. They returned and she led the tribe as she must for she was eldest.

In the eighth fruiting, Gren noticed something long cutting through by the no-plant-patch. It was yellow and black with strange stripes, the colour of poison, and light to touch. It was not plant and when he tried it anyway it was not good to eat. It stretched and broke easily. Throwing nettlemoss across showed that to walk on this side was to live. The younger of the tribes dropped to Ground, swam in water without crocksocks, cut the youngling plants that sprouted. Lily-yo was cautious. To cross the yellow and black vine far in any direction was still death.

In the nineth fruiting the man Haris found something hard, not wood, not growing, in the Ground. With a man's skill to carve souls, he shaped it with other things like it. The blade he shaped cut better than any wooden knife or sharpened branch. Embedded in a stick, the tribe could kill the nettlemoss without being stung, cut the tough hides of trapper snappers. Ground was a strange place.

In the tenth fruiting, the first of the immense grey traverser threads anchoring earth to moon snapped. The great spider-like traversers already on their voyage through vacuum were knocked astray, the plants' seeding journey never to be completed. Through the void in the trees, Lily-yo held her new-born and watched the great grey web in its slow fall to earth. Those that fell towards the no-plant-patch smoked and fell to dust. Now she could never be sky-buried, for the sky was out of reach.

In the twelth fruiting, the no-plant-patch had pushed back further. To see the red orb that hung in the void above the trees was to fear it would fall. The gap in the Green was huge, and the tribe had grown used to the red light, twining creeper with leaves to shelter skin when it reddened and blistered. Ground mixed with water made mud to smear over skin, and mud-covered skin did not burn. With the crush of berries, colour was possible. Lily-yo did not indulge. She had to lead.

In the fourteenth fruiting, Lily-yo, now ancient and soulless, dared a berrywhisk's tendrils to cut free its seeds. Placed on the ground in patches, they took fruit quickly, and were cut back as quickly. So long as they grew, the tribe was fed and here they could gather in safety in numbers. Lily-yo doubted herself. Mistakes were death and she was not teaching the new ones to survive the Green.

In the fifteenth fruiting, the not-traverser landed in the not-plant-patch. Great and silver, with strange fixed silver leaves and flames beneath it, the wind knocked the nuthuts rolling. When something opened in its side and a silver figure stepped out, Lily-yo challenged it as the tribe hid. It removed its head to show another head, a man's. A rare thing to see a man. They were too rare. "What tribe do you come from?" she asked. He paused.  
"The sky," he said. She knew that.  
"Why are you here?"  
"The-" he said a word that meant nothing, pointing to the red light in the sky "- will no-patch-plant everything. And you. We are here to take your people to the sky."  
Lily-yo, ancient, leader, soulless, seer of thirty-five fruitings of the fig tree, looked at the sky where she had thought she could never be buried, and at the man who was young and healthy and at the void of the no-patch-plant. The time she gave to thought would have killed her in the branches before she knew her answer, and spoke it.  
"We come."

And in the belly of the great silver not-traverser as it lifted, through the transparent panes that were harder even than burnurn seedpods, she saw in the centre of the now-huge not-plant-patch, the man from fifteen seasons before. He was folding something yellow as the streamer, stowing it as the tribe had their leaf-shelters. He turned, raised a hand to the craft in farewell, and was lost to sight against the Ground.

_Author Notes: A homage to Brian Aldiss' incredibly inventive novella Hothouse._


End file.
